Life: Paused

A photograph is supposed to capture the moment, to take an instant of that person’s life, preserve it, and remind that person of that moment for life. And longer.

But a blurry photograph fails in this regard.

A blurred photograph is almost never on purpose, of course. You want the image to be crystal clear; it’s a complement to your memory, which is already hazy. You remember all the important things, like the yells, the laughter, the sadness, the happiness. But when you can’t quite reach the specific details, the photograph is there to help you, in its graphic pristineness, to remember.

That blurred photo doesn’t do shit. It might do a little bit to help you remember, but all you’ll end up doing in the end is go, “Huh?” and most likely throw it out of your album. And how sad would that be? Something that might have potentially brought back good memories, thrown out like common garbage. It’s throwing away potential years of your life. It’s disgusting. And hideous. It makes me want to vomit that someone would take a blurry picture with a camera and just keep it instead of immediately deleting it and retaking a new one. They have no excuse either, since it’s the digital age. It’s the same reason that, if I ask someone to take a picture of me, outside I’ll be smiling and thanking them, but inside I’ll be cursing their soul and hoping they run into a string of bad luck that month. It’s the same reason I try to find a table or some other firm surface to hold my camera on (which, incidentally, might have led to some physical abuse of my camera…but that’s irrelevant!).

The camera, which is a machine, is supposed to be perfect. The reason why we use cameras instead of paintings or drawings is because the camera captures so much more realistically and truthfully than drawings do as a whole. It can be artistic, of course, and it can tell as many lies as a painting can, but that’s not its primary use. Its primary use is to counterbalance our imperfectness as humans in describing emotion, remembering situations, and recalling memory.

But…perhaps that’s the whole point.

In the midst of my ranting, I came to the thought: since humans are imperfect creatures, why should our graphical representations of ourselves be perfect? Isn’t a perfect representation of us in itself an imperfect representation? The image, if perfect, shows perfect humans doing whatever it is they’re doing in the scene. But if blurry, it shows that there is more beneath their hazy façade. We’re not seeing their true selves, and that what we see is only a dim perception of an image they have created for themselves and what others see. It’s something nearly everyone in the world does, and then not just one blurry image. They have multiple blurry images that they show to different groups of people, and switch out as necessary, so that no one ever knows their true self. It’s deception.

Well, then again. That happens with clear photographs too.

Does this have any truth to it? Possibly.

Am I over-analyzing things? Most definitely.

Do I still hate the damn pictures? A resounding yes.

# pet peeve

NO NO NO NO NO

NO

ITS

IT’S ITS

GET IT FUCKING STRAIGHT

6

He prayed that the dice would land in his favor.

“Six and six!”

He let loose a victory cheer. He had won the round, and gotten off with some earnings, too. Smirking at all the furious glares in his direction, he gathered up his chips and walked towards the front counter.

“If you would,” he said with a smile.

After walking out with a newly fat wallet, he got into his car and drove to his hotel. He walked into his room and plopped down on the bed….when suddenly the phone rang.

“What.”

“Please,” came a teary, choked voice on the line. “Please, come back! Don’t waste our money like this!”

“I can use MY money however I want to! When the hell did it become YOUR money?!”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that! Please! Think of our child! You’ve spent so much alrea-“

“I WON TODAY, WOMAN. I WON SOME MONEY. STOP PISSING ME OFF, AND STOP CALLING.”

———————————————————

“Hello? HELLO!?” The line clicked, and there was silence. Weeping, she hung up. Hoping her hysterics hadn’t woken her child, she slowly peeked into her room, where she saw her sleeping peacefully. Relieved, she closed the door with a click. She collapsed into the couch, exhausted. She had done the figures so many times she had almost memorized the exact numbers. They no longer had any funds left. If they didn’t somehow manage to get $500 dollars within the next month, they would get kicked out. Of course, even if they did manage to, they wouldn’t have running water or electricity. She was barely paying for gas. Even the phone she had just used was a friend’s cellphone that she had begged to borrow for the night. Loan sharks kept coming around, providing an unnecessary reminder of how much they owed. It was all because of her husband’s discovery of gambling.

She hated them.

She hated those dice, so much.

Those evil, 6-sided, white polyhedra that had led her husband astray, that had gotten him stuck in the mire of gambling, that had led him to be colder and more aloof towards her and his daughter.

They might as well have been the Devil himself. The Devil that was eating into her financial, mental, and physical stability.

# numbers

# short story

So I’m on my way like:

and then somewhere along the way I got hurt like:

But I don’t even notice, and continue on like:

and then later I see I have some kind of wound, like a bruise or something, and I’m like:

And I’m just wondering “What the fuck is that?”: